Continuing our "First Look" theme, let's take a look and the new Profiles.

Profiles Now Have Four (4) Unique Sections:

à¹ The main Profile page
à¹ Demos
à¹ Store
à¹ Feedback

Since many of you have such impressive resumes and also a growing portfolio of demos, separating the two only makes sense and gives you more room to shine.

Learn more about the new Profiles now!

PROFILE

Welcome to what will be your new profile!

Your Contact information is still prominently displayed at the top of the page with an option to "Send Email".

Below the contact info, you'll be able to display one demo that we'll call "My Primary Demo". This ensures that clients can listen to samples from any page on your profile and always link to more demos if they'd like to hear more.

The Profile page displays most text information including your voice description, languages, accents, ages and a new area called special skills.

Special Skills is the ideal spot to add in copywriting, editing, mixing, mastering, music production, video production, multi-media design or anything else that you can do that is complimentary to your core voice-over skill set.

Credentials are important in any professionals career and often sway the hiring decision in your favor. In the education area, you can add in voice-over training, classes and workshops you've taken as well as university degrees or college diplomas. With so many associations out there, we found it more accommodating to give you the opportunity to notate the unions affiliations, associations or guilds that you're part of. We strongly believe that a detailed credentials area will present a solid impression of your professionalism and ability to get the job done.

Detailed Service Description differs from other areas of your profile as this is the best place to describe what kind of work you can do and how you perform your services.

Payment Terms clarifies (in advance) how you expect to get paid. This eliminates the back-and-forth that typically asks "how do I pay you?" or "when do you need to get paid". Do you accept credit cards, PayPal or check? Do you issue invoices that are due 30 days later (Net 30)? Outline all that here and give the client the answers their looking for.

Next Steps is our way of prompting the clients to provide you with their project details by clicking the large "Request a Quote" button.

SIDEBAR

The sidebar on the profile will be consistent across your profile pages. The sidebar also has new features.

The Rating provides clients with an instant snapshot of your trustworthiness. The date joined and your location will also give visitors the confidence that you've been in business for a while.

Page Tools are useful features designed to help the client interact with you and your profile page.

Should the client find themselves on any of the other pages within your profile, the "Voice Talent's Other Demos" links will quickly navigate them back to your demos where they can listen to your voice samples.

DEMOS

You'll now have a dedicated page just for your voice-over demos!

Below each demo, you can add Tags (learn more about how add tags to your demos here) and now a brief description of the demo. The description is optional, but may prove useful to those who want to expand on the content or context of the demo recording. Also new is the "Learn More >>" link that if clicked upon will link to the Demo Details page (see below).

Before moving on, you'll notice the Studio area has been moved to this page, too. This keeps all the audio recordings and production items on the same page and separates any technical information from your main profile view.

DEMO DETAILS PAGE

Each demo you upload will have it's own unique URL.

Why do this?

Because many of you use Voices.com for file delivery and a replacement for an FTP server. So, if you've got a file to deliver, upload it to Voices.com and then share the link of this page with your client. They can preview the audio using the flash player or download the source file by right-clicking the hyperlink.

These pages will also come in handy for clients who are scoping your work out and want to send the link to their colleagues prior to contacting you for work.

STORE

Your Store is where clients can buy your products. We've taken the familiar shopping cart model and adapted it for the marketplace at Voices.com.

Coming up this fall, you'll be able to sell products in the Voices.com Store as well as in your own store located within your profile, an innovation that we're pleased to offer to you that will make it easier than ever before to be hired based upon work you've already done.

In your Store, clients can see which products you offer and can add these items their cart. Note that the same products that you have listed in the Voices.com Store will also appear in your personal store located at your Profile.

While viewing your products, clients have the option to email you about a product or save your profile to their favorites, making it easy for the client to return to your store to complete the purchase at a later date.

PRODUCT DETAILS PAGE

Product pages will be where the client user can view:

à¹ The full product title
à¹ The full product description
à¹ More information about you including your services as pulled from your profile (payment terms, about us etc.)
à¹ Complete feedback history

FEEDBACK

To complement the other areas of your profile, the Feedback page displays Ratings & Reviews that you've received from completed transactions at Voices.com as well as comments left by clients who paid you by other means in the References section.

The client list is a great spot to jot down all those companies, organizations and groups that you've worked for.

What Do You Think?

The newly designed profile with its four distinguished areas is definitely an improvement.

Focus groups, industry experts and fellow Voices.com members have all contributed into making these developments a reality.

Comments

I'm also looking forward to it... it looks great! One question: I remember some talk about selling specific items or packages in our stores, for example, a 60 second commercial for such and such an amount...is that what where looking at here? Also, is there a general store for the whole of voices.com with everyone's stuff available or will it just be individual stores?

The Client List is completely editable by you. We understand that you'll want to add new clients and perhaps even remove items that may become dated (political campaigns, cars by year or if the demo contains music from a specific time period).

Yes, you can add to the client list at anytime.

@Tom,

Your Voices.com website will contain the four sections, with one of them being your personal store. That's the screenshot with the "Add to Cart" buttons.

You're right in that there will be a site-wide store that will include products from everyone. The Voices Store will be searchable and showcase newly listed products, just purchased and recently reviewed products.

We'll be covering the store in greater detail tomorrow, so stay tuned for more details.

Hmm. The new GUI looks great, but I have a few questions.
Although in the business for almost 8 years, I'm only a little over 3 months on Voices.com. This means that I have not requested references from clients over the years, as I had nowhere to post them. My question is, until I gather some references, what happens if I leave that area blank? Will the References area still appear, but empty? That would look... not so appealing. Or will the references section simply not appear?
Same question goes for any area/field left blank: will the area/field still apear in the profile? For example, if I choose not to specify my location, will the Location field still appear?
It would be really nice if only fields/areas that are filled in actually appear. That would give us a lot more flexibility in deciding how our websites look.
Also, it would great if there were a few new color themes to choose from.

You raise a good point, and one that I believe our development team has already addressed.

If a field on your profile is left blank, then the area will simply not appear. That should handle situations where voice talent simply haven't taken a few moments to complete their profile, or if there is a field that you prefer to leave blank.

We're also working on color themes, and background images however they aren't scheduled for this release as we decided to focus on the absolutely critical features. You can anticipate color themes within a few months, if not sooner.

Everything sounds great! There is one thing I have not come across yet: How and when will we be notified to update our profiles? It is my understanding that some of the categories will merge with others, which will affect our demos for those categories. Will we be notified before the launch of the new site version?

Posted by:

Michael Montgomery

October 2, 2008 3:39 PM

Hi Michael,

You'll get plenty of notice and we'll send a special email to our members when the new site has launched.

Hello everyone,
The new site looks good, one question. I no longer can send emails via the contact us list. Also How do I change the demo that pops up on featured talent? I can not seem to figure that out.
Many thanks,

To change the demo that pops up on Featured Talent, you will need to edit the file in question and deselect the demo you don't want to be featured, save your changes and then select the demo you do want featured in a particular category and be sure to mark it as the featured demo and save your changes.